


Repairs

by TheDeathEcchi



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 17:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7901842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDeathEcchi/pseuds/TheDeathEcchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was touched, ecstatic, overjoyed, and grateful beyond words. Since then, it'd been a priceless treasure to her, and she never been seen without it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repairs

During a firefight, certain sounds were to be expected. Bullets whizzing by. The odd explosion or two. The screams of agony from the dead and dying. Frantic callouts through the commlink. All these were sounds Mei-Ling Zhou was familiar with. All these sounds she'd heard before.

Except one. 

It happened far after the point of her being able to do it. An anti-personnel mine had triggered, and her quick reflexes allowed her to enter cryostasis just as it went off. The blast was powerful and deafening, but the ice had taken the most of it, and sent her sailing back only a few meters. But when she had gotten to her feet, her long, brown locks brushed against her locks, and with a jolt, she felt the absence of something very important. Her hairpin.

She looked around, and saw it high in the sky, sailing straight towards the ground. Mei ran towards it, but she was too slow, and the hairpin falling too fast. Desperate, she dove for the accessory, only for it to cruelly brush against her fingers as it shattered on the ground, the broken hairpin scattering like pieces of silvery rain.

She looked at the destroyed hairpin, unable to process what happened. A choked sob escaped her lips, and tears began to well in her eyes. "No..." she rasped, picking up the pieces and trying to glue them together, forgetting she was in the middle of a firefight with Talon agents, and very likely to die if she didn't remain focused. "No...zhè bù kěnéng fāshēng..."

"Look alive, there, Snowflake!" Mei barely registered the swaggering drawl of the junker, nor the volley of grenades he launched over her head that turned an approaching Talon operative into a pile of wet, smoking red chunks. She continued to sob silently, unable to tear her eyes away from the broken pin.

She remembered the first time she'd seen it. Her friends and colleagues had brought her into the common room, and handed her a small mahogany box with her name carved into it in an elegant scrawl. When she opened it, she'd gasped at what lay within, nestled on crushed plum velvet. A silver hairpin with an enormous ruby ornament, and a snowflake dangling from it by a silver chain. It looked wonderful, and so well-crafted. And expensive. She'd learned that they'd each spent roughly half their salaries to commission a designer for it. She was touched, ecstatic, overjoyed, and grateful beyond words. Since then, it'd been a priceless treasure to her, and she never been seen without it.

And now it lie in pieces on the ground, nothing more than trash.

"'Ey! You bump yer head there, or what?"

Junkrat knelt down next to her, a curious look on his soot-covered face. Following her gaze, he spied her broken hairpin. "Oh, was that yer lil' bauble? Tough breaks. But hey, when the mission's done, ya can jus' get another one, ri--"

Mei turned to glare at Junkrat, spittle flying from her mouth as she spoke. "Báichī! That was not just some 'bauble'! You have no idea what that meant to me! And I can't just 'get another one'! I...I..." The damn broke. She wailed, tears flowing like a river. That hairpin had meant more to her than her own life. In that pin was the hopes of her friends, colleagues, family, a reminder of a past life, and hope for her new one, and it was wrenched from her in less than a minute.

"Hey, hey, calm down!" spoke the Australian. Comforting crying women wasn't exactly his strong suit. "Look, maybe we can talk about this when we ain't gettin' shot at from all sides a by a buncha bogans."

When Mei didn't respond, Junkrat side and hoisted up Mei, draping her over his back. The climatologist hung limply, not caring she was now no more than luggage, and simply closed her eyes...

-/-/-/-/-

Mei awoke hours later in the sick bay, disoriented. Looking around, she sighed with slight relief that she was no longer in a war zone, but then the events prior to her passing out reached her.

Reaching a hand up, feeling for the familiar pin, she felt only hair. 

"It's gone..." she whispered. 

"What's gone?" Mei yelped as Angela Ziegler appeared next to her, concern written on her face. 

"...Nothing." sighed the Chinese woman, settling back into bed. "Just my hairpin."

Angela tilted her head. "Are you sure? Isn't that it right there?" Mei's bolted upright, looking to where the medic was pointing, and gasped.

Sitting atop the side table was her hairpin, perfectly restored, looking as good as new. The ruby shone brightly in the setting sunlight that streamed through the window, the silver of the pin gleaming, the snowflake charm coiled into a small spiral on the table's surface. Resting against the pin was a cream-colored envelope with black fingerprints on the edges, and a manic yellow smiley face in the center. 

"What...how...who..."

Angela giggled. "In order...it's your hairpin and a letter, I assume a very extensive repair job, and, and I'm sure you won't believe this, but Junkrat. He came in here about twenty minutes ago, left it, and said," she altered her voice into a fairly passable imitation of the demolitions expert. "'Make sure the icy lil' sheila gets it, roight? And tell her this one's on the house!'"

Mei couldn't believe it. From what her friends told her, it had taken the designer two months to design that pin. And yet Junkrat, the man with more property damage tied to his name than feathers tied to birds, who had made his own prosthetics, their resident agent of fiery chaos, had managed a repair job on an object so delicate and priceless, it looked brand-new. If it wasn't an impossibility, she'd have thought he'd gone out and bought--or stolen--another one.

"That boy is certainly full of surprises, isn't he?" chuckled Angela. 

"I'll say." plucking the envelope off the table, she ripped it open, and unfolded the letter within. 

"'Dear, Ice Lady..." Mei puffed out her cheeks in annoyance. "Nǐ shì rènzhēn de ma...he can't even pretend to remember my name?" Shaking her head, she continued reading. "'Saw you were pretty banged up 'bout that trinket 'o yers, so I went ahead and fixed it. Try to be more careful with it, yeah? This was a bitch to put back together. And since I'm such a sweet guy, I won't even charge you for it. 'Cept maybe a peck on the cheek, if yer offering! Cheers, Junkrat.'"

Mei huffed as she set aside the letter. "That uncouth ruffian. He's so...so..."

She shouldn't help the smile that slowly crept onto her face.

-/-/-/-/-

"Junkrat!" Said Australian nearly jumped out of his seat at the sound of Mei yelling for him.

"Wot I do!?" he replied as Mei began stomping over to him. He figured she was mad over something he'd done recently, but for the life of him, he couldn't come up with anything. He readied himself for another of her famous lectures, when--

A pair of soft, plump lips pressed against his cheek, pulling away just as he realized what the hell just happened. Pink bloomed on his face, and his jaw dropped as he took in the sight of a smiling Mei. "Thank you." she said, turning on her heel and sauntering away as though nothing happened.

And as her back turned, he saw the newly-fixed pin in her hair, and, if possible, it was shining even brighter. 

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> Zhè bù kěnéng fāshēng = this cannot be happening
> 
> Báichī = idiot/moron
> 
> Nǐ shì rènzhēn de ma = are you serious


End file.
